Relief to small businesses and homeowners recovering from this season’s round of hurricanes will be dramatically hampered by a series of severe Bush administration budget cuts at the Small Business Administration.

The federal agency’s ability to respond to victims of Hurricane Katrina was severely handicapped by dramatic budget and staffing cuts at the agency prior to the storm.

The SBA was so overwhelmed during relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina that the agency was forced to hire thousands of temporary workers to do the work of the multitude of experienced SBA staff that had been laid off by the Bush administration.

A Government Accountability Office report issued on July 25, 2007, stated: “SBA also faced challenges training and supervising the thousands of mostly temporary employees the agency hired to process loan applications and obtaining suitable office space for its expanded workforce. As of late May 2006, SBA processed disaster loan applications, on average, in about 74 days compared with its goal of within 21 days.”

Source:  http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2008/09/22/editorial2.html